Transcriptome Sequencing to Detect Gene Fusions in Cancer

Recurrent gene fusions, typically associated with hematological malignancies and rare bone and soft tissue tumors1, have been recently described in common solid tumors2–9. Here we employ an integrative analysis of high-throughput long and short read transcriptome sequencing of cancer cells to discover novel gene fusions. As a proof of concept we successfully utilized integrative transcriptome sequencing to “re-discover” the BCR-ABL1 10 gene fusion in a chronic myelogenous leukemia cell line and the TMPRSS2-ERG 2,3 gene fusion in a prostate cancer cell line and tissues. Additionally, we nominated, and experimentally validated, novel gene fusions resulting in chimeric transcripts in cancer cell lines and tumors. Taken together, this study establishes a robust pipeline for the discovery of novel gene chimeras using high throughput sequencing, opening up an important class of cancer-related mutations for comprehensive characterization.